More Than Flesh
by sariagray
Summary: 'He's used up his words long ago, didn't keep track of them and rambled until there was nothing left.' A look at Ianto during Season 1 using "Alone With Everybody" by Charles Bukowski.


Title: More Than Flesh

Characters/Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Team

Word Count: ~1200

Rating: PG13/T

Spoilers: Touches on _Cyberwoman_, _They Keep Killing Suzie_, and _End of Days_.

Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood. I do not make money off of Torchwood. In fact, it seems as though Torchwood owns and makes money off of ME. This is for entertainment purposes only.

Author's Note: Based on Bukowski's _Alone With Everybody_. Originally posted to my LiveJournal of the same name.

* * *

**More Than Flesh**

**i. **

_the flesh covers the bone  
and they put a mind  
in there and  
sometimes a soul,  
and the women break  
vases against the walls  
and the men drink too  
much  
and nobody finds the  
one  
but keep  
looking  
crawling in and out  
of beds.  
flesh covers  
the bone and the  
flesh searches  
for more than  
flesh. _

He feels the soft pad of a finger against his clavicle; it strokes as if coaxing breath/moan/word from somewhere deep, somewhere buried and unreachable and empty. He smiles but no sounds come out because he is so utterly _empty_. He's used up his words long ago, didn't keep track of them and rambled until there was nothing left.

Sometimes, he marvels that Jack still has an abundance – the man hasn't shut up in over a hundred years. Perhaps, with limitless lives, he had also been granted limitless words; he certainly speaks with the same careless abandon that he sacrifices himself.

The sheets are clean and crisp and cool and Jack's eyes are simply begging him to open his mouth, let some sort of sound pour out. It's like a game, except that it isn't. Not at all. He doesn't _know_ what to feel or say or want or need. All is black, grey, black.

The warmth, though just as shadowed, is reassuring and to recognize desire in someone else's eyes sends a momentary bright spark across his vision. He knows _what_ Jack desires, though. And while he's willing to give the man his body, he's pretty sure he doesn't have what Jack's _really_ looking for. Not anymore.

He feels breath on the bare skin of his arm, stirring the tiny dark hairs. He feels the blood pumping through his veins, a strong flow that tenuously connects him to the living. He is corporeal. There is a flush where the blood collects, a natural reaction to hands or lips or promises.

He has a heart. It pumps blood. He has a heart. It pumps blood. He has a heart. It pumps blood. And that's all it's good for, anyway.

"Please," Jack pleads when the silence becomes too heavy and burdensome. "Say _something_."

He relents, a little, and offers a noncommittal hum that sounds as close to pleased as he can make it without over exaggerating.

**ii.**

_there's no chance  
at all:  
we are all trapped  
by a singular  
fate. _

"You were young when you signed up," Gwen muses one day in an attempt to make conversation.

He shrugs and smiles wanly as he hands over her mug. She glances at him curiously and holds it close, watching him deliver the rest of the coffees out of the corner of her eye.

"Weevil sighting," Jack calls exuberantly as he bounds from his office.

Owen appears from the medical bay, his hands and forearms sticking up awkwardly in the universal posture of a surgeon. "Just one? 'Cause I'm elbow deep in alien guts right now."

"And I'm still running an analysis on the communication device that came through this morning," Tosh reminds them all.

"Just one," Jack assures with a smile. "Gwen? Fancy a hunt?"

She nods and grabs her coat.

**iii.**

_nobody ever finds _

_the one._

Jack presses against his back firmly, protectively, and Ianto allows himself the small pleasure of snuggling into the embrace. The standoff with Suzie had been a reminder to all of them that Torchwood and long life were contradictory concepts. Well. Unless you were immortal, of course.

Kissing the patch of soft skin behind his ear, Jack tightens calloused fingers around Ianto's waist as if in defiance. He lets Jack do this, doesn't complain; he merely sighs in amused resignation.

"Afraid the monster under the bed is going to come up and grab me?" he says when he realizes Jack's steel grip is going to cause finger-shaped purpleyellowgreen splotches against pale white flesh. Tiny vessels breaking, blood pooling. He has a heart. It pumps blood and...

Jack gasps at the number of words spoken in this usually silent tomb, but covers it up well. "Don't even joke. Did I tell you about the time I was visiting a floating brothel on Jaxia 4B? They specialized in this rare, exotic beverage that could..."

He allows Jack to talk without interruption, though he barely pays attention. He can hear the tinge of fear and defeat in the usually bright voice; it seems as though Jack has caught a virus that congests his chest with failure and loneliness.

As he drifts off to sleep, lulled by the soft drone of Jack's voice, he feels the bed shift and soft lips press against his own. It's comforting and...

**iv.**

_the city dumps fill _

_the junkyards fill _

_the madhouses fill _

_the hospitals fill _

_the graveyards fill_

"What good is it?" Gwen slumps forward on the couch, her head in her hands.

"What good is _what_?" Owen prods, though he knows perfectly well what she's talking about; he feels it, too.

"This. All of this. Everything out there wants us dead. Maybe we should let them have at us. Maybe they're right."

Jack raises an eyebrow at this showing of doubt, but doesn't say anything. Instead, he watches as Ianto stalks over with beverages, the best he has to offer. They each look at him with relieved gratitude as if his round silver tray bears All The Answers rather than five mugs of expertly-brewed coffee. Then again, maybe it's enough in its simplicity.

"It's like we're always sacrificing one to save another," Gwen continues, though the fight seems to have been drained from her, leeched out of her muscles by the warm ceramic in her hands.

"It's usually less balanced than that," Tosh placates as she takes her first, eager sip. "Sacrifice one to save a million, more like."

"But there_ has_ to be a better way." Like the flick of a switch, the ire flashes in Gwen's eyes again. The coffee sloshes in the mug.

"There isn't," Jack soothes, his voice quiet and fragile. "Trust me – I've been at this a while. We just protect the ones we love and hope for the best."

As he speaks, he takes his mug from Ianto's outstretched hand, last as always. Their fingers brush and Jack looks at him in a way that makes the hair on the back of Ianto's neck stand up.

They are surrounded by death; it envelops each of them like fog, clings to them with cold, pale fingers…it makes sense that he keeps turning back to life, keeps clutching at it like lungs gasping for air. It is instinct, a circulatory rhythm like the beating of his heart. It pumps blood.

**v.**

_nothing else _

_fills._

Now Ianto talks nonstop.

He tells the walls about his day. He waxes poetic about Gwen's rise to leadership, how it's a blessing and a burden all wrapped into one distinctly Welsh package. He complains about Owen's cruelty and admits to the concrete floor that the two men care about one another the way that brothers would. He asks the ceiling if it thinks that Toshiko will gain more confidence now that they are down to four; he vehemently hopes so.

His voice bounces off, echoes back to him, and if he closes his eyes and breathes in Jack's fading scent, he can pretend that he's not quite so _alone_. But the reflected words are too deep and low and only half-formed.

Ianto doesn't blame Jack for abandoning them, though. Jack is a man on a quest for life and love and absolution; why _should_ he stay behind for an empty shell? Void and black and grey.

He has a heart. It pumps blood and…shatters.

**End**


End file.
